The first white settlers, predominantly large, conservative, hard working German Catholic families, brought cows in the 1880s to Stearns County, Minnesota, to supply their families with milk and milk products. The temperate climate, gently rolling hills, numerous lakes, streams, and rivers, and abundant trees and grasses of the area made it ideal for family dairy farming. By the end of World War II dairy farming had become a way of life and the major industry in the county.

The Stearns County dairy industry developed in three phases. The earliest, subsistence farmers, while suffering many hardships, embodied a pure form of family farm ownership and independence. Farm labor was that of the family itself, part of the Jeffersonian ideal in which farmers lived in harmony with nature, with a minimum of outside influence or control. One or two family cows provided milk for drinking, cooking, baking, churning butter, and making cheese. Oxen supplied power to till the land and harvest the crops. This phase lasted until the 1890s, longer in some parts of the country.

The second phase evolved from the first as modern technology (farm machinery) made possible increased production and abundant feed. Creameries provided markets for the sale of milk and milk products. Larger dairy herds were bred and raised to accommodate commercial markets. Farm families moved into the wider world, becoming more dependent on capital and less on family labor. After 1938 rural electricity lightened their work load. World Wars I and II accelerated mass production and capital-intensive farming.

In the third phase, after World War II, government, always somewhat present, became a permanent member of farm families, imposing rules, regulations, and restrictions on dairy operations. Dairy cattle became more productive through advances in breeding, feeding, housing, and disease control, making economies of scale and dependence on capital necessary to economic survival. The independent structure of family farms changed forever. Farmers began to consider themselves part of 6 agribusiness," the difference between farm families and their urban counterparts grew smaller, and dairy farming as a way of life began to disappear.

Throughout this evolution Stearns County, the top dairy production county in Minnesota and one of the top ten in the United States, has epitomized the dairy industry across the country, yet the family has remained the heart of the dairy industry there.